McLaren Mercedes Singapore GP debrief

SINGAPORE GRAND PRIX TECHNICAL DEBRIEF WITH MARTIN WHITMARSH
Despite the lengthy preparations beforehand, were there any aspects of
the Singapore Grand Prix weekend that caught the team unwawares?
"The bumps were a factor that caught everybody...

SINGAPORE GRAND PRIX TECHNICAL DEBRIEF WITH MARTIN WHITMARSH

Despite the lengthy preparations beforehand, were there any aspects of
the Singapore Grand Prix weekend that caught the team unwawares?

"The bumps were a factor that caught everybody by surprise. Before we
arrived in Singapore for the race weekend, we sent people there to do an
accurate survey of the track surface for use in our pre-race engineering
work. Inevitably, with a new circuit, the track surface evolves and the
asphalt settles - a factor that we either didn't measure or that
developed after we'd done our survey. So that was the most unexpected
element of the weekend.

"We also need to look more closely at the pitlane exit and entrance. I
think the race organisers will probably have to extend the entrance and
exit for next year, moving them further away from the apices of corners.
I'm sure that will be changed."

Were you satisfied with the approach taken to the drivers' schedule?

"Yes, it worked amazingly well. Both drivers were incredibly dedicated -
and the team that set their schedule up, led by Aki Hintsa, put a lot of
work into it. But it was quite a bizarre experience: I went back to the
hotel after the sessions, had something to eat and then sat with our
drivers until 4.00am. You left them to go to bed and they would be
putting on a movie - it was quite a strange feeling, but it worked very
well."

"In terms of ambience, facility and backdrop it was just fantastic.
Clearly, this has been a learning year and the organisers will have spent
a lot of time overcoming the unique difficulties of attempting to put a
racetrack into a metropolis. But we've seen Monaco evolve over many
years and I can see the Singapore Grand Prix becoming our 'Monaco of the
East'. The commitment of the Singaporean Government and the race
organisers has created an enormous amount of goodwill and that will only
be reflected by the teams, who will really want to make this venue work."

Could the team have realistically achieved more than third and 10th
positions on Sunday evening?

"The deployment of the Safety Car just ahead of the first pitstops
inevitably hurts the regular two-stopping teams more than the others, but
we feel that we dealt with the situation well. We asked both Lewis and
Heikki to adopt a fuel-saving strategy in order to minimise the risk of
needing to refuel under the Safety Car, and then we 'stacked' both cars
and dealt with them efficiently once the pitlane was opened.

"It was unfortunate that Heikki was forced to queue, because it meant he
would be fighting among the traffic for the remainder of the race. He was
also affected by brake problems towards the end of the race and was
therefore forced to slow his pace.

"With Lewis, the fact is that when you're fighting for a world
championship, you're necessarily more risk-averse than those teams
who feel more comfortable pushing for a strong result. And while we take
nothing away from the efforts of Renault and Williams, our evening's
work was tinted by the knowledge that neither Ferrari driver looked like
scoring strongly. We'd have looked pretty silly if we'd thrown
Lewis's points finish away by telling him to push like mad. The
reality is that we played the numbers game perfectly on Sunday evening
and were beaten by two cars which, for one reason or another, were able
to exploit different variables than ourselves."

Would you say Lewis was disadvantaged by the arrival of that first Safety
Car?

"The current Safety Car deployment rule can cause some drivers to be
disadvantaged relative to some of their rivals, yes. To that extent, it's
a bit of a lottery, but it's one of those variables that tends to
even-out over the course of a season: sometimes you benefit from the
Safety Car's deployment, other times you don't.

"What made the situation a bit more unfortunate for Lewis in Singapore
was the time taken for the stop-go penalties to be applied to those
drivers who had refuelled under the Safety Car. Nico was able to get the
hammer down out in front while the stewards were coming to their decision
- which effectively neutered his eventual stop-go penalty.

"With hindsight, I guess we could have brought Lewis in for fuel and
tyres at the same time as Williams brought Nico in. And had we done so,
Lewis would very possibly have won the race. But, in truth, you can't
second-guess things like that, and we brought Lewis in as soon as the
rules allowed, in good faith. Also, to be fair to the stewards, they had
a lot to think about at the time."

The team brought a large number of improvements to the car for this race;
what have you got planned for the final three fly-aways?

"Ordinarily, the Singapore weekend would have been our last big upgrade
package of the season. But we've now got an upgrade package focused
on Brazil and will be looking to see whether we can pull any of those
improvements forwards. There will still be little bits and pieces brought
to the car for the two Asian races [Japan and China] but the package of
upgrades won't be as big as the one we brought to Singapore."